Agonizingly Perfect
by Ashi-Grey
Summary: After the DoM, Hermione tries to come to terms with everything that has happened, leading to a dance session in the RoR. Songfic - Michael Sembello's Maniac. H/Hr


_So... I'm back after a fairly long break in uploading stuff. Yeah, I've still been writing, but not anything I'm ready to upload. Anyone familiar with the author's notes from my other stories will know I've been seriously ill (boo, hiss!), and I'd been told I was getting better... well, I'm not. They read the results wrong. Shitty, right? I can't really bring myself to write any more of 'Heels', or 'Tabitha Dursley' or 'Identity', because they're sort of from an era in my life when I was dealing with the first onset of being ill... and I sort of need a rest from that right now. If I get back to them, I hope you'll read them! For the moment though, I think I'll put them all officially on hiatus. _

_Right, enough moaning. This is a songfic, about Hermione dealing with the aftermath of the DoM. And finding herself in love with Harry, although that's not overly explicit. The song is 'Maniac', as I'm sure you'll be able to work out, by Michael Sembello. I hope you enjoy it, and please, please, please with cherries on top review!_

* * *

Hermione sucked a breath in, pushing the door to the RoR open. It swung open to reveal a long, high-windowed studio, with dark, polished floors.

Hermione slipped inside and shut the door, inhaling the scent which seems to be dance-studios. The sunlight fell in shafts from the high, thick windows, specks of dust pooling, swirling and twirling as though dancing to an unheard beat.

The door clicked shut behind her, and she shrugged out of her robes, school uniform and shoes, standing in just a simple black leotard. Concentrating hard, she asked the Room for a pair of dance shoes. Sure enough, a pair of simple, light pink soft leather shoes appeared, and she slipped them on. The room provided a tray of chalk, which she twisted the soles of the shoes in, to help them grip the shiny floor.

She began to stretch, warm up, her mind buzzing uncomfortably with everything that had happened over the past few days. _Why hadn't she stopped Harry?_ She pressed her head to her knees, stretching her back. _Why had she let him run off into what was so obviously a trap? _She twisted her arms around, stood in a star shape. _How could she ever forgive herself for almost getting him killed?_ She pulled her ankle up to her bum, stretching the muscles of her leg. _How could she have been so_ stupid?

Satisfied she was warmed up, she pulled a head band out of her pocket, and used it to tie her hair into a pony tail. Unfortunately for her, her hair was too thick for a bobble, and they often broke if she tried to use them.

She stood alone in the middle of the vast studio, half in the shadows and half in the light from the windows. Eyes closed, she begged the room for music.

At first she didn't recognize it, and stood still, just listening. Then the lyrics started, and she knew exactly which song the room had chosen, and an almost feral smile broke her face.

"Start it again." She commanded into the echo-y hall

And so it did.

Throwing all her emotions, all her hurt, pain, love, terror, trust, hope to the music, Hermione began to dance.

_Just a still town girl on a saturday night, lookin' for the fight of her life__  
__In the real-time world no one sees her at all, they all say she's crazy_

Her feet pounded the floor to the fast beat, eyes shut, just running on the spot. This was not meant to be beautiful – it was meant to be such hard physical work that she forgot about the rest of the world and only felt the beat, only felt the dull, numbing pulse of working muscles

This was something she could never normally be, never normally do. She wasn't the girl who danced crazily, the girl who tried to numb the pain. She was the girl who was logical, sensible, not some ridiculous, pained dancer. No one saw her for who she was, expect possibly Harry, and sometimes Ron. She was just there, to the other students, someone whose grades were unreachably high and intelligent was double their own. They just called her a know-it-all, and were content with that. Content with hurting her, cutting her.

_Locking rhythms to the beat of her heart, changing woman into life__  
__She has danced into the danger zone, when a dancer becomes a dance__  
_

Her slightly-bitten fingernails cut into the slightly sweaty palm of her hand as she clentched her hand into a fist, the other going up to force a whisp of hair out of her eyes. Still her feet moved, impossibly fast, and her hips began to ache. But this was what she wanted – physical pain knew nothing of emotional agony.

She could feel the beat pounding with her heart, different yet perfectly in sync. Just like her and Harry – oh if only she'd stopped him, if only she'd been more insistent! Her eyes clentched shut, lashes harsh against her pale eyelids.

_It can cut you like a knife, if the gift becomes the fire__  
__On a wire between will and what will be_

Going with the pulse, as though it commanded her, owned her, her body moved fluidly, filling the dance hall, yet seeming as inconsequential as vapour. Her face was flushed from the effort, heart pounding and blood rushing through her veins. This was it, she knew. Here, she felt alive. More alive than she had done at the Department of Mysteries, fighting for her life, fighting for Harry's life. This flooded her, became her. She became the music in a way only a dancer could ever understand.

_She's a maniac, maniac on the floor__  
__And she's dancing like she's never danced before__  
__She's a maniac, maniac on the floor__  
__And she's dancing like she's never danced before_

She ran the length of the studio, leaping and bounding and falling and twisting and her ears thrummed, full of music and life and loss. Her muscles pulled and strained from the abuse, and she breathed the pain in deeply, relishing it's iron, burning fingers as they clawed at her throat.

Over and over her mind replayed the look on Harry's face as Sirius had fallen through the veil, the absolute agony caused by love, and she almost believed it would be better to have never loved, than to have loved and lost.

But the music bounded on, endless beats and melodies and rhythms. The sunlight hit her hair, slick from the exhertion, as it shifted through the windows. Her eyes were dark and dilated as she concentrated solely on the music. And she realized then, that loss was just a part of love, a part which must be embraced just as all the other emotions must be, else one becomes less than human, less than real, less than living.

_On the ice-build iron sanity is a place most never see__  
__It's a hard warm place of mystery, touch it, but can't hold it__  
__You work all your life for that moment in time, it could come or pass you by__  
__It's a push of the world, but there's always a chance__  
__If the hunger stays the night_

Leaping as high in the air as her body would, she allowed herself to plummet towards the dark, oiled floor, at the last moment folding and rolling, taking the impact as though she had been made for such a thing, born to do it all her life. The leotard, designed as it was, did not stick to her sweaty back, nor the shoes slip on the floor. Her chest heaved with the effort, but a slight smile curled the corners of her mouth.

She had found something, she knew, something that was more special than even the beat of the music, more special than the pulse that commanded her body to dance. She had found something so illusive, even Luna was probably yet to find it, yet to feel it's heart-wrenching, head pounding dizzying embrace. The thing many believed they'd found, only to realise it was but a whisper, but a lie. Something that people lusted for, hungered for. And she was terrified to know she had fallen off the cliff of sanity, yet exhilarated to realise she was in love.

_There's a cold connective heat, struggling, stretching for defeat__  
__Never stopping with her head against the wind_

Her body ached, begged for release, begged to let itself fall, and yet at the same time, begged never to let go. She could dance herself into Death's embrace, if only to remain in this simple world where nothing but the beat and the throb of her muscles mattered. Nothing but the slip-slide of the leotard over her slick skin, nothing but the _pad-pad-thump-swwwish_ of her shoes as they beat on the floor, pounding her hurt and frustration into the dark wood.

Oh if only life were that simple, if only she could be nothing but a dancer. Not a know-it-all, not a prefect, not a daughter, not a friend, not an enemy. Not someone with a future, not someone with promise, not something with potential. If only there were time in life to just be, to become one with the pain that saturated her body, tantalizing and agonizing and perfect. If only she had the self-confidence to allow herself to be this, this person who was just a dancer. If only she could define herself by her actions and not by her reputation. If only people wouldn't judge as if they were better, judge as if they had a right.

_She's a maniac, maniac, I sure know__  
__And she's dancing like she's never danced before__  
__She's a maniac, maniac, I sure know__  
__And she's dancing like she's never danced before_

She could feel the future pressing on her lungs like a huge, cloaked boggart, begging her to laugh at the insanity of life. Begging her to tell herself she was just dreaming, just tossing and turning against her pillow, trapped in a viscious dream world where everything was perfect and everything was perfectly wrong at the same time. A world where she'd lost more than she'd ever had, and loved even more than that. A world where she could dance, a world where life waited for nothing and everything in the exact instant.

And the feeling of her body pulling this way and that, flush against the beat of the song, harsh lips of the melody drifting in and out of her ears, never grabbing her as the beat did, yet guiding her, pushing her, pulling her all the same. The beautiful feeling of all her muscles tense, ready to pounce.

Oh this was true release, true height of life, honest love. This feeling should never die, she knew, yet it would. It would die soon, she knew, and it hurt that she would die with it. Because this part of her, this Hermione she was while she danced, was nothing like the Hermione who she showed to the rest of the world. This was nothing like the person people expected of her. It was as though looking through a mirror that distorted her image. And that mirror would crumple, crumble into the specks of dust, still swirling in the sunlight from the window.

_It can cut you like a knife, if the gift becomes the fire__  
__On a wire between will and what will be__  
_

She danced a fine line, a thin precarious line between genius and insanity, battling with the demons which seemed as real as the pull of the music, as true as the love she had found herself plummeting into. She knew there would be a moment, a moment when she would stumble and fall, yet that thrilled her as much as it terrified her.

There would be a point when everything overwhelmed her; she'd been there before. There would be a point when she wouldn't be able to save herself – nothing but hope her fall was as pleasurable as her fall into love, her fall into music.

Her music would die, and she mourned it's passing although it still pounded on. Mourned the loss of freedom, loss of pain. Mourned the manic, stabbing, soothing lull of pulling her muscles to the flow.

_She's a maniac, maniac, I sure know__  
__And she's dancing like she's never danced before__  
_

Yes, it would die. But for now, now she danced.

* * *

_Well, there you go. Hope it wasn't too hideous! I sort of feel like I over-did the emotions in this. I'd love a review!_


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